Prepared probes by boiling 3mins and immediately incubating in ice water bath for 30mins.

Slides were rinsed with 2x SSC and air dried for 5mins.

Probes were diluted 1:300 in 1000uL of Prehybridization Buffer. All three negative control probes (indicated by “-C” in subsequent labeling) were combined into a single dilution.

NOTE: RLOv Membrane Gene 2 probe was ruined because boiling water got into the tube during denaturation. This didn’t happen to any of the other tubes that were all boiled at the same time. Not sure what happened. However, this may have worked out OK because I did not pull enough slides to accomodate the negative control probes. So, now that I’m not able to test three probes, I can use the negative control probes!

HYRBIDIZATION

300uL of probe solutions and cover slip were added to the following slides:

The three groups of slides were placed into separate slide cases and a 1mL of Prehybridization Buffer was added to each case (to maintain high humidity during incubation).

The Roche protocol recommends using only 10pg of plasmid DNA for probe labelling. As such, all three probes were diluted 1:10,000. A 1:1000 (999μL H2O + 1μL of plasmid) was made first. Then a 1:10 dilution was made (90μL H2O + 10μL from 1:1000 dilution of plasmid).

Two reactions were run for each plasmid: one with the DIG label (indicated by a ‘+’) and one without (indicated by a ‘-‘). If the labeling was successful, the PCR products from those reactions containing DIG will be larger (i.e. migrate slower) than those without. That is exactly what we see in each of the three potential ISH targets.

So, we now have three ISH probes ready for action! Will proceed with making fresh ISH buffers and ISH.

Colony PCRs were performed on each of the transformations from 20151015 (RLOv_ DNA_helicase, RLOv_head_to_tail, RLOv_membrane_gene_1, RLOv_membrane_gene_2, RLOv_tail_to_fiber) to confirm successful ligations in plasmid pCR2.1 using the M13F/R vector primers.

Colonies were picked form the transformation plates with pipette tips, re-streaked on a secondary, gridded, numbered LBAmp100+x-gal plate and then used to inoculate the respective PCR reactions.

Six white colonies (positive clones) and a single blue colony (negative clone) were selected from each transformation.

30μL of each reaction was run on a 1% agarose 1x Low TAE gel, stained w/EtBr.

Results:

All the PCRs look good. All white colonies selected contain a PCR product of appropriate size (i.e. larger than the blue colonies; negative [-C] control). Will select clones #1 from each to grow up for plasmid prep.

The PCR products were separately ligated using The Original TA Cloning Kit (Invitrogen).

LIGATIONS

REAGENT

SINGLE REACTION VOL (μL)

x 5.5

Purified PCR

5

NA

10x Ligase Buffer

1

5.5

pCR2.1 Vector

2

5.5

H2O

1

5.5

T4 DNA Ligase

1

5.5

TOTAL

10

22

Ligation reactions were set up on ice.Combined 5μL of purified PCR product with 5μL of ligation master mix in a 1.5mL snap cap tube. Incubated 24hrs @ RT.

TRANSFORMATIONS

50μL of X-gal (20mg/mL) was added to a LB-Amp100 plates, spread and warmed @ 37C.

Five vials of OneShot TOP 10 chemically competent cells (Invitrogen) were thawed on ice. 3μL of the ligation reaction was added to the cells, gently mixed and incubated on ice for 5mins. 50μL of cells were transferred to the LB-Amp100+X-gal plates, spread and incubated O/N at 37C.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The negative control sample should actually be labelled UW08:22-11A.

PRIMER SET

EXPECTED PCR SIZE (bp)

RESULT SIZE (bp)

RLOv_membrane_gene_1

401

~400bp

RLOv_membrane_gene_2

318

~400bp

RLOv_tail_fiber_gene

451

~500bp

PCR looks great. Excellent amplification in the RLO positive samples (06:6-54), with no amplification in the negative controls (UW08:22-11A) nor in the no template controls (NTC).

Excised the bands from each of the RLOv positive samples (see gel image below) and purified the DNA using UltrafreeDA Spin Columns (Millipore) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. DNA was stored @ 4C for cloning/labelling/sequencing at a later date.